


Twelve Rounds

by abbichicken



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Banter, Boxing & Fisticuffs, Comedy, Developing Relationship, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mansion Fic, Silly, Teaching, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-10
Updated: 2011-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:58:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 4,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik/Charles Summer Fic Exchange, for evil15smiles. Prompt: <i>Physical training together before Cuba. Charles' combat experience is pretty much being shoved while drunk, so I imagine this would end with Erik pinning him to the floor and doing atrocious things to him.</i></p><p>Summary: "What the hell are you doing?" Erik asks.</p><p>"You <i>hit</i> me."</p><p>"Did you think I was going to shadowbox you to athletic perfection?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Round One

Charles hits the ground with an _oof_ and dust flies up around him. "Oh..." he groans, as he turns and stretches and his shoulder clicks a bit.

Erik is standing there making _what the hell are you playing at?_ face and hands, and Charles looks useless, helpless, and frankly quite silly.

"What the hell are you doing?" Erik asks, confirming his facial expression.

"You _hit_ me."

"Did you think I was going to shadow box you to athletic perfection?"

"Kind of?"

"How would that help?"

"Tactics?"

"Tactics never helped any mutant...you never know what you'll be up against. Like you, on that boat. One sly telepath and you're left with only your fists and your wit...."

Charles coils into the ground a bit, wishing he would sink into it. "I think I'm more the bodyguard type. As in, couldn't I have one, instead?"

"No, Charles. Everyone else is training. You need to challenge yourself as well. And, being as you're so very, very lacking in anything other than short-distance sprints, suggesting to me that you may just have had some kind of brief career as either a peeping tom, or a petty thief, I think we've hit upon the area you'd best benefit from developing. Fighting skills."

"It was so very, very kind of you to step forward and offer to teach me, in that case."

"Your face encourages a good left hook. I thought you needed to know."

"I think," Charles says, stumbling to right himself, whilst trying to simultaneously massage his jaw and shoulder, "you have made your point."  
_____

"Oh!" Raven gasps, with Christmas-style excitement. "Injuries! What did you _do_ to him, Erik?"

Erik can't quite tell how serious she's being, so he simply shrugs, and walks off.

"Did you have a fight?" Raven continues, unpeturbed, reaching out to poke at Charles' reddening cheekbone. "Did you win?" she asks her brother, in a voice that certainly isn't serious.

Charles pulls a face at her and she pets him, gently, with a continued touch of mockery. "You should get some ice on that."

Charles makes a small, slight growling sound, and goes to get some, because, really, the wrong end of a fight isn't a good look for a Professor. It's just not very distinguished.

Erik disagrees with this the next morning, when Charles is bruised and looking suitably sheepish.

"Look what you've done to me," he complains to Erik, first thing.

"What? You look much more distinguished. Disguises your whisky blemishes."

Charles goldfishes at him because this kind of thing, as far as he can tell in the few weeks they've had together, is the sign of Erik in A Good Mood, and it's only a slight shame that Erik's good moods are so damn unpleasant to everyone else.


	2. Round Two

"I really don't think this is necessary. After all, we've already conquered their telepath. She's safely put away and well out of our range. I saw no sign of another with Cerebro, certainly none anywhere near our target..."

Erik is very literally hauling the protesting Charles down the path, strong hand wrapped around Charles' upper arm, dragging him into a square of garden, surrounded by high, dense greenery. Just out of sight of the main house enough that, he hopes, no-one will interrupt. Erik doesn't take kindly to being interrupted at anything.

"Are those _excuses_ that I hear?" he asks, dismissively.

"What? No, Erik, no, just facts. I think perhaps I might hone my skills in other areas..."

"So you're going to sit back and conduct us all through ridiculous exercises all afternoon, and never push yourself? Never? You're not going to shape up at all?"

"I'm a perfectly good shape for a professor..."

"If this war would be fought from behind a desk, Charles, there's no better man I can imagine to lead it. But, whichever way you imagine this will go, there will come a time when you're going to be physically challenged, and wouldn't it help if you could hold your own without relying on your mind?"

"I'm not all that sure that it would..."

Erik gives Charles such a _look_ that Charles finds consent to suddenly appear to be the only manly option he has.

"Fine." He clears his throat, hoping that the action will also clear the sound of reluctance in his vocal chords. "Show me something."

"Hold out your hand."

Charles does as he's told, flipping his arm out, palm up, so quickly that Erik wonders what else he might make Charles do, simply by issuing straightforward commands in a sharp voice.

"Okay. Make a fist."

Charles turns his hand over, and curls up the fingers around his thumb.

Erik frowns.

"I thought you said you boxed at school."

Charles shrugs. "A little."

"And no-one told you how to make a fist?"

"We had gloves."

"Of course you did. Of course. Is there any part of your childhood that wasn't safely cushioned?"

Something in Charles' eyes makes Erik bite his tongue.

He shapes Charles' fist correctly ("Like this, see?") and Charles is, he thinks, surprisingly pliable, and interested.


	3. Round Three

"Come on, take your shirt off this time."

"Oh, Erik, stop pushing."

"I haven't even started yet... Come now, you're the one who said you wanted to keep it traditional."

"I really don't see the benefit of being half-naked..."

"It'll make you less careful. It'll mean you become more conscious of the muscles you're using because you'll feel them, rather than the pull of your clothes. And, most importantly, you can't get a good reach when you can't lift your arm above your head properly."

"It'll take more than toplessness to let me get a good reach on you."

"That's why we're training, Charles, that's why we're training..."

Erik slips his sweater off and folds it, carefully, putting it to one side.

Charles is so taken with the sight of Erik flexing and stretching himself in the cool sunshine, rounding and dropping his shoulders, broadening his chest, pulling his arms this way and that that he doesn't even think to copy, or to do anything, except, just, look. To stare, even.

He's much more defined than Charles had expected - has the body of a man who takes care of himself, and Erik...hasn't seem to Charles as if he's the type to care about much at all, so that's...there's a lot to take in.

He obliges Erik's insistent demand, and feels somewhere between liberated and ridiculous. But Erik's right: it does help.

Later that night, when he's straightened out between fresh, cold sheets, drinking in the dark and the quiet after a hard day's everything, feeling his body sink into blissful restfulness, he remembers the sight of Erik's half-naked form in such perfect technicolour that he's truly taken aback at the strength of the memory. He feels himself come alive again with the consideration, and, blocking out rationale from his mind, finds himself with his hand sliding down his own stomach, skittering over his hips and stroking at the inside of his own thigh with a weird, curving teasing that's new to him, contemplative, rather than immediate, enjoying something unconscious but absolutely necessary.


	4. Round Four

"Honestly, Charles, _bend your knees_ , come on, like this..." Erik demonstrates, bouncing with a lightness and flexibility that you wouldn't expect, if you had spent as long seeing him stand/sit so perfectly still.

Charles tries to _bounce_ , but, it just doesn't come naturally to him. He feels stupid, and awkward, and rather like that time when there were extremely unwelcome dancing lessons placed in his path. An experience he certainly doesn't want to revisit in front of Erik, or indeed, ever again.

He stops, hangdog, "This is just not working..."

"I had no idea you would be the type to whine so much."

Neither did Charles, to be honest. Usually he's a sucker for learning, and a show-off of the highest order, and, if he's perfectly honest, he was just getting to like the image of being Charles Xavier, Action Professor, but, perhaps it's the memory of last night, the distant echo of imagery he conjured up from references he'd never admitted he had before...now he simply feels all out to sea.

He clears his throat, as if to also clear his mind. "If you're experiencing regrets about your offer to whip me into shape, then we can always..."

"A whip, you say..." Erik says, with a twist and glint of a smile. "There's a thought."

Charles thinks of the coiled horsewhip hung above the fireplace in his father's old study. He'll hide that, he thinks. He's really not sure how prone Erik is to joking.

They run sprints, tiny, ten second sprints across the patch of grass, and Erik does something that Charles would describe as _gambolling_ which he is pushed to copy, and he does, and it is ludicrous and nonsensical but leaves him very much out of breath, and collectively this is becoming something he could only describe as fun, actually.


	5. Round Five

"Erik, this has nothing to do with fighting."

"But, everything to do with wit and instinct; essential qualities in any fight."

"I promise you, I can hide from everyone for as long as I like. I'm excellent at hide and seek. Just ask Raven." Charles smiles, remembering his sister's delightful frustration at her inability to beat him at the simplest of childhood games. "As for my wit..."

"You can't think of anything witty enough to finish that sentence the way you want to, can you?" Erik says, with a half-smile, which expands to a full smile when Charles scowls at his correctness.

Erik gives him a headstart ("You going to count to sixty, then?" "I'll give you to a hundred," Erik offers, in cute response. Charles frowns and wanders off, certain of himself.) and Charles is embedded in a yew hedge before Erik's reached thirty-five.

He composes himself, waits, and constructs a careful shield around himself with his mind, so that Erik won't be able to see anything other than the hedge, just as it was before. Charles doesn't have to worry about leaving clues behind him, as long as he keeps a careful image of how the scene was when he arrived at the forefront of his mind.

And yet...no sooner Charles has settled down and taken a few deep breaths, musing on the ridiculousness of the exercise, a shadow is cast over the dappling sunlight, and he looks to his left to see...Erik, standing right there.

"I can't see you, Charles, but I know that you're here."

Charles holds the illusion tight, whilst desperately wanting to jump out and shout, _how?!_.

As if he's done just that, Erik explains, "This is the nearest and most dense, you-sized hiding place, and, knowing you as I feel I've come to, I think you've decided this is a ridiculous exercise and haven't made any kind of effort at all."

With a sigh, Charles reveals himself.

Erik's look of smug satisfaction gives Charles the greatest inclination he's yet had to hit him.

"Just remember that feeling," Erik says, turning on his heel and walking back towards the mansion. "Lesson over."

Charles isn't used to being so easy to read. It's unsettling...but, at the same time...captivating...


	6. Round Six

"Can I watch?"

Charles laughs, nervously. "Haven't you got something better to do?"

"Not really," Raven says, twisting her hair around her fingers, thoughtfully. "Besides, I want to see if you've learned anything."

Charles makes a face between condescending and patronising, and Raven huffs. "I just think," she clarifies, "that Erik's right. You definitely need to work on your strength. I mean, how many times have I shown you what a weakling you are?"

"Come now Raven, we're hardly going to be fighting for the last chocolate digestive in this war..."

"It's not just chocolate digestives that make people do crazy things though, is it?"

Erik appears in the doorway. "Ready, Charles?"

Charles nods.

"Is it?" Raven repeats, attempting to be pointed.

Charles ignores her. On the outside.


	7. Round Seven

Erik's skin is so _cold_ ; even when he sweats with exertion, somehow, he's still cool and smooth as china.

Charles finds trying to fight with him at all to be difficult when, at each point, Erik's flesh gives way _just so_ and it's as if each motion releases something in him, in Erik, between them, something that makes Charles that bit more breathless, and distracts his concentration that much more.

The longer each bout lasts, the harder it gets.

He's getting stronger, too, but in the strangest way. At these times, something about this exact place, this setup, this... _it's just me, and you, and all we're doing here is making you into a better man_ and it feels...odd. Wonderfully odd.

Charles has never been the subject before.

He wonders if this is how the students feel, when he helps them, when he suggests improvements, tests, when he praises them for their improvement.

And as he catches sight of Erik showing him a sequence he's going to bring at him, and as he notices his own skin flush and prickle with a _want_ that is becoming, from where he's standing, impossible to ignore, he hopes to everything that, actually, this isn't at all the way that the other students look at him.

He's so wrapped up in his thoughts that Erik lands every single one of the punches he's just described to Charles, and yet, and yet, Charles is so relaxed and calm and, in unconscious honesty, glad to feel them. He isn't scared of taking the hit, and he even manages to stay on his feet, and at least aim a couple of returns.

"You weren't listening, were you?" Erik muses, loosening up and taking a breath. "Still, you can take more than I'd imagined."

"Am I doing well?"

Charles doesn't mean to demand approval, wishes he could chew the words back down his throat but they're already out there in the world.

Erik nods.

"Yeah."

Lesson over.


	8. Round Eight

He's been running with Hank every morning, laughing each time the boy laps him, but secretly trying to get a little further each time, trying to keep his breaths more even, to be less beetroot-faced as he strains himself, to be...lighter, faster, better. Erik's persistent approach is having the positive effect Charles hopes his own belief in Erik's powers and abilities is having in reverse. The idea that there is a fair exchange to be had here is becoming more important to him. There is a sense, Charles thinks, that the two of them are forming a partnership which could be something...new. Something very special indeed. Something equal, but challenging.

Charles has never liked a challenge he isn't sure he can conquer. But then, his previous challenges have never squared up to him in the light morning rain, skin sheening and muscles prickling tight and contoured.

He prepares himself as best he can for the attack.

Erik gets three shots in and then stops, backing off. Charles advances two paces and makes a jab, but Erik knocks it away and drops his guard, exasperated.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"You look...very...unfocused. Nervous, even. Is there something wrong?"

Charles shakes his head.

The only thing that's wrong here is him, it seems.

"You're looking at me in a...very, very unusual way, Charles."

Charles can't help but smile back at that. It probably conveys absolutely the wrong message. Or the right one. Charles realises his face is having a conversation the rest of him hasn't quite caught up with yet.

Something in Erik's response suggests to him that Erik not only knows exactly what is going on here - here, inside him, before Charles even knows it himself - but that he's...just fine with that.

"Pull yourself together. You won't last five minutes if you're busy being soft."

Charles stifles a chuckle.

"Come on now," Erik says, and resumes the lesson. "Jab, jab...duck...come on..."

Charles does everything he's told, with an eager warmth all over him.

And later, much later, when once again he contemplates the feel of Erik surrounding him and pushing him and adrenaline surging in his mind and his guts, when he remembers that look...that moment...

...and lets himself imagine so much more.


	9. Round Nine

Convinced that they're making a breakthrough, Erik's insisted they stay out here all evening. It's long enough from dinner that Charles is hungry again, and close enough to night that Erik's pale frame moves virtually ghostlike against the sucking-dark density of the greenery.

Charles pushes, just a little, at the edge of Erik's mind, as Erik squares up, tired, with the relentless dedication of a man who doesn't know when to give up, and doesn't care when others try to.

He's just wondering if there is as much more to this as he'd hoped.

As he's checking the periphery of Erik's emotions, Erik lunges at him, and there's a slip, and then as Charles gets the edge of what he's looking for as Erik drives his fist forwards they collide in the wrong way, and Erik falls and catches Charles at the shoulder and they're in a heap in the worn grass in less than a moment.

Erik laughs, and pulls Charles to him in a strong, encouraging motion. To him...onto him.

And this should be awkward. This should be really awkward.

But it isn't.

Is it?

Charles has five kinds of double-take as he's eye-to-eye with Erik, who's looking at him with a smile only in his eyes, pulling Charles closer, and...

"Erik..." Charles' words are shaking as they leave his mouth, even as his body finds ways to make itself more comfortable right where it is. "We _can't_."

Erik turns his head to the side a little, and looks, unhurt, quizzical. "I believe it was you yourself who told me that _can't_ isn't a word I should apply to anything."

"I meant...to your powers..."

"Oh, Charles, I have _powers_ I think you really ought to experience."

"But it's...I mean...we can't...I don't think we should...I mean, this is all very...but it's...and people talk, you know...and we're...a good example, I mean...it's a risk...and I've...ahem...never..."

Erik waits, there, stock still beneath him, casually observing each of Charles' attempts to talk himself down. When he runs out of small non-phrases, by turns fearful, sweet, nervous and anxious, he asks, "Are you quite finished?"

Apparently so.

Erik pulls Charles down and kisses him, smudging, pushing, full force, met by a hand at the back of Charles' head, holding him tight and close and giving him no chance for further debate, internal or otherwise.


	10. Chapter Ten

It's something between pulling each other closer, grappling for the sake of it, and, somewhere in all of their lust, still trying to be the one on top, as if that would legitimise what's happening, round ten proper, all part of the process.

The grass releases warm, wet scent beneath them as they twist and find all the ways that they can crush themselves tight to each other, jolting and pushing through the confines of their trousers, fingers and nails scrabbling at the bare skin of chests and backs as if that would transfer all the way down to where it mattered, and even if it doesn't, imagination is better than nothing.

Out here there's no-one to judge. There's no-one to call them out, there's no way they can be seen, there's nothing...wrong, with this. Nothing at all. To suggest that what feels like the only possible option is illegal is something Charles suddenly finds impossible to understand. Nothing has ever felt so...obvious, and physically essential.

Charles would confess he's surprised at how...passionate Erik is, how determined, and he already knew how damn strong the man was but hadn't sufficiently applied it to this position which is bruising and brilliant and _god don't stop_ , and, he's sure (even at this point when they're both so breathless and covered in grass and mud that they'll have to wash under the water feature before going back in) that Erik is in some way having him on, that this can't be happening, that he's fallen asleep in the middle of a long memory of their 'training', and then, and then, he _looks_ at Erik and it doesn't look like that, and he can't help himself but he has to check, has to test Erik's mind for sincerity, and there's no trace of anything else, and even though it seems too good to be true, perhaps there really is no law that says that only things of substandard quality exist, perhaps...

...Erik bites his lip and rolls him over and grinds hard against him and moans, and Charles forgets everything else and focuses, at last.


	11. Round Eleven

They stumble up the stairs to their rooms, arms around each other, half for stability, half for unspoken comfort, wholly because they can't be apart right now, equally unfulfilled and wanting as they are.

"Did you want to..." Charles says, once they've reached his door, implying uselessly, and making a series of small hand gestures that have Erik laughing.

"You don't think you've had enough damage done to you for one night?"

Charles shrugs. "I don't think I've had enough of _you_ for one night?"

"I'm not sure I've much more to give."

"Maybe you just need some practice."

"Then maybe my strength and stamina will finally win out..."

"No. No, that will never happen."

With a broad grin, Charles pulls him inside, and demands to put this to the test.  
_______________

" _Fuck_."

Charles slumps back on the bed, breathing so deep and hard that you can count his ribs at the apex of each inhalation.

"Oh, _fuck_."

Erik wipes the sweat from his face and the come from his lips, rubs his eyes, stinging from the salt, pushes his hair out of the way, knotted and damp as it, like everything else, has become.

"Didn't," Erik says, through his heavy breathing, voice rasping around the strain he's caused his throat, "see that coming."

"What?"

"Why can't you apply that level of stamina to our training sessions?"

"If you prefer, we can reschedule our training sessions? Perhaps we could just...confine our learning to the bedroom?"

"Oh no, no, Charles. I finish everything I start."

"This has become very apparent..." Charles notes, turning, and stretching sore, over-exerted muscles, feeling the blood rushing back around his body.

"No, I think any continuing activities here will have to count as extra-curricular."

Charles laughs. "Your teacher's voice is delightful." He'd swear that - for the first and possibly only time in his life - Erik blushes. Interesting. But it could just be a trick of the light.

Erik squints at Charles through the gloaming, and wonders what he's done to deserve this. He only suggested the "let me teach you something" setup as a way to get closer to Charles in the first place, but, nonetheless, he never expected they'd get this close. He didn't think Charles was the type, and yet, to look at him now, he seems as warm and contented as if born only to behave this way. In the past, he's hardly been spoilt for choice. But if he could have drawn you the man that would be his match...well.

He might've looked a hell of a lot like Charles.

He definitely would've ended up pinned to the bed begging for relief, and if Erik's imagination would only have extended to his pleading for more, oh god yes, oh god you're so fucking perfect, _in Latin_ , then it definitely would've included that, as well. As it happens, that was an unexpected bonus.


	12. Round Twelve

"Raven! RAVEN!"

"Mmm?"

"Do we have any smelling salts?"

Raven appears at the door in a second. "What happened?"

"I, erm..."

"You...what?"

"I think I might have knocked Erik out?"

"Charles, it's September, not April, so I don't know what trick you're trying to pull here, but..."

"No, really..."

Raven covers her laugh with her hand, to hasten appropriate reaction. "Really? Huh...er...I'll look."

Charles hangs onto the doorframe, wondering exactly how he's managed this, and also, if he's completely honest, feeling slightly proud of himself.

A minute later, Raven reappears with a small glass bottle, corked with a tiny stopper. It looks like a prop for a production of Alice in Wonderland. "It's pretty old," she says, "I don't know if it'll still..."

"Thanks," Charles says, grabbing it abruptly from her hand, and dashing off, before Raven can ask him if he needs any help, and also, why he's muddy, shirtless, and has unusual scratchmarks on his back.

It's wrong, Charles thinks, to take a moment to admire Erik unconscious - breathing, and definitely not choking or anything, but still, so still and perfectly laid out...

...it's wrong to stop and stare, but he does it anyway.

Just for a second.

And then he does the right thing, and unscrews the bottle, nearly knocks himself out by 'checking it still works', which it really does, eye-wateringly so. He holds the bottle to Erik's nose and - useful thing he did learn at school, catches the back of his head when he jerks up and crashes back down again, trying to get away from the burning scent.

"Urgh..." he coughs, followed by "...what?" He screws his eyes up, blinks a lot, and focuses on Charles. "Oh, fuck, really?"

Charles nods, and strokes Erik's hair more because he can, than because he means to. "K.O.?"

"Urgh..."

"I think that was a K.O.! My first! Go me."

"Urgh."

Charles waves three fingers in front of Erik's face. "How many?"

"Twenty-seven. Fuck off with your smug expression."

"Oh, come on. I had a good teacher, what can I say?"

"I challenge you to a rematch..." Erik slurs, trying to stand too quickly, and falling back on his arse.

"Not today, not a chance. You may very well have a concussion. You're spending the rest of the day flat on your back."

"And you're spending the rest of the day..."

"Working with the other students, of course. I'll have Moira check in on you from time to time."

"Must you?"

"She's from the C.I.A.; I'm sure her medical training is perfectly up to date..."

Erik rolls his eyes. "I meant, can't you...tend to me...being as it's all your fault..."

"I'm sorry, did you just ask me to _tend_ to you?"

"I was being metaphorical."

"I'm not sure you were, my friend, but still. No, no I think you need to rest. After all, you've sustained quite a hit."

"You got lucky."

Charles shrugs. "Either that, or I found my stroke. Now come on, I can't carry you..."

"We'll work on your strength training next week..."

"So next time I can knock you into the middle of November?"

"Oh, you wish..."

"Not really."

"Help me up?"

"My absolute pleasure."

When Charles suggests to Raven that he's going to stay the night in Erik's room "just to be on the safe side", she doesn't think it's at all strange.

They make a good pair, she thinks, as she watches Charles trying his very best not to look like Erik is leaning far too hard on him, as he helps him upstairs, in a much more public, and lopsided version of the previous night. A very good pair indeed.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Twelve Rounds Art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/252127) by [averzierlia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/averzierlia/pseuds/averzierlia)




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